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Government’s optimism over palm oil spill ‘ludicrous’ say volunteers cleaning up Hong Kong's beaches

Some of the closed beaches could reopen by the weekend, says environment undersecretary

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Speaking at Middle Bay Beach on Thursday, Tse said the problem with clumps of palm oil washing ashore had ‘stabilised’. Photo: Nora Tam
Some of the closed beaches on the city’s southern coast could reopen this weekend, the government said, as the deputy minister for the environment suggested the problem with clumps of palm oil washing ashore had “stabilised”.
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But residents helping to clean up some of the worst-hit beaches rejected that assessment as “ludicrous”.

Environment undersecretary Tse Chin-wan was still short of answers on Thursday as to how the bags of palm stearin cleaned up from shorelines and local waters would be handled.

“We can observe that there is almost no more palm stearin left in the water, only a small amount is left on Lamma and Hong Kong Island’s southern coasts,” he said during an inspection at Middle Bay Beach.

“The problem of palm oil washing up onto the shorelines has already stabilised. At some beaches, the situations are nearing points of being completely cleaned.”

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Tse said some of the beaches could reopen before the weekend.

What we still don’t know about the oil spill

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